Blog Post

Pinch Media Offers Metrics for iPhone Developers

Just as any online content producer or web site owner is hungry for metrics about their web site, iPhone application developers are bound to want the same types of facts and figures surrounding the usage of their programs. New York City-based startup Pinch Media, which has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital and a handful of angel investors, offers iPhone SDK developers free code that gives them analytics based on unique users, active users and length of time the application is in use.

Not only has Apple has sold roughly 5.4 million iPhones to date, but it’s working hard to get the device into as many people’s hands as possible, launching it in country after country around the globe. At this point, it’s hard to gauge how large this market could become.

And with the iPhone SDK coming out in June at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, we’re about to see an explosion of apps being offered by mobile developers. Indeed, as the iPhone ecosystem continues to evolve, startups that offer tools such as Pinch Analytics are going to be really valuable.

Vaelek – I can categorically state that no personally-identifiable information is sent to Pinch Media. Lat/long coordinates (which we’ve found to vary extremely widely in accuracy even in raw format) are only used to calculate an aggregated number of users in a large geographical area, nothing more – and, of course, can’t be sent without the user agreeing to share their location through an explicit ‘this app would like to access your location’ pop-up.

This could be a useful tool. But the fact that all the apps using it provide no indication that personally identifiable information is being sent to Pinch Media is not cool. Especially considering the fact that if it is used in an app that is allowed to access your location, this information is also sent to Pinch Media.